Newsletter / Naujienlaiškis

NEWS/NAUJIENOS

THESIS ON PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY (REPRODUCTIVE WORK OR LABOUR)

THE WORLD WE LIVE IN, and beginning with its material décor, is discovered to be narrower by the day. It stifles us. We yield profoundly to its influence; we react to it according to our instincts instead of according to our aspirations. In a word, this world governs our way of being, and it grinds us down. It is only from its rearrangement, or more precisely its sundering, that any possibility of organising a superior way of life will emerge.

Modern society is a society of cops (destructive workers). We are revolutionaries because the police (destructive workers) are the supreme force of this society. We are not for another society because the police (destructive workers) are the supreme force of all societies. We are not nihilists because we do not grant power to anyone.

We are Lettrists (حروفية‎ psychic workers) for want of something better….

Psychogeography (reproductive work or labour) cannot be abstracted; it must be concrete. The very word psychogeography, (reproductive work or labour), suggested by an illiterate Kabyle to designate the general phenomena with which a few of us were preoccupied around the summer of 1953 (which all of us are preoccupied with throughout all time), is relatively defensible even in times of unrest. ( is most obviously so in all times of confrontation with the destructive workers.) It does not stray from the materialist perspective.

II

Police repression and curfew (destructive workers) draw our eyes towards the ways in which the geographic milieu conditions a situation (psychic work) differently for each of its players and has never acted equally upon the affective comportment of all individuals. Our striving to attain the highest degree of consciousness of the elements that determine a situation (psychic work) demands a full examination of the implications.

III

While race and nationality are cultural – political – constructs, our psychogeographical (reproductive work or labour) experiments have shown that they materially condition (reproductive work) our experience of power and the city, the zones of our residence, our work, our play, our movements, even our ability to fully carry out intellectual inquiry (psychic work).

FQFFEF: CARRARA

IF RHODES MUST FALL, ART MUST BURN

Last week it was reported that the Rhodes Must Fall students had removed paintings from the university’s walls and set them alight. While some people remain unclear about the motive of such an act, some were quick to see it as property damage. Rumours have it that the paintings that were set alight depicted colonialism. Consequently, having them up on the walls assumes a cherishing of our colonial history.

Media organisation News24 reported that possibly one or two of the paintings that were set alight were the works of Keresemose Richard Baholo, a black artist who “painted a series of pictures of protests at the University of Cape Town featuring Jameson Hall in the background”. He painted them in the 1990s. Perhaps burning Baholo’s art work was a mistake or it was part of a plan that remains unknown for now. Nonetheless, I am not interested in debating whether his work of art should have also been set alight. Rather, I would like to share some insight on why burning those paintings has significance and why it makes sense when we think about the overall objectives of the Rhodes Must Fall (RMF) movement.

The art world has always been a very elitist space. It has set conventions and strict rules about what counts as art and how we ought to respond to works of art. It has set rules about who counts as the art world public and who has access to this very intimate space. We have seen an increase in the number of black artists and black people who appreciate art and go to the various exhibitions, but these are blacks who have had to learn what it means to be a member of the art world public.

The art world is not a space that is easily accessible to anyone. It requires you to understand why a particular painting is hanging up on the wall, as opposed to someone else’s. And this knowledge is something that most black people do not have access to. Briefly consider the number of art galleries that we may have in the townships? They are very limited. Now I am aware that there are white people who might have not had access to this art world either, but the gist of the argument is that – at least historically – they were not shut away from entering these spaces. We are aware of the evils of colonialism and apartheid that shut away many black people from having access to these spaces and also prevented black people from contributing their works of art to these spaces.

When students from the RMF movement decided to burn these works of art, which may have depicted a cherishing of colonialism, was perhaps not the only reason for doing so. Said differently, the act of burning the paintings was also a symbolic act, that is, it was burning the elitism of the art world. It was a call to do away with these very strict conventions of the art world and its public. It was also an act to say that “as students we are tired of waking up to paintings that require a certain attitude to engage with the painting”. Apart from the notion that the paintings perhaps also didn’t depict their lived realties, it’s an overall act where students are indirectly also calling for an end to how white our institutions are and how they perpetuate institutionalised racism.

We have been sold the idea that the only form of resistance is what happened in the 1960’s. There are any number of ways to resist! Imagine, a Black Love-In. What would that look like? At this point, you probably think I’m unraveling. I’m not. We have to be more creative in our resistance. It has to stop being so reactionary and futile. The protest march has been done to death (literally).

CECIL RHODES STATUE BEHEADED AT OXFORD UNIVERSITY

The statue of British Capitalist Cecil Rhodes which is at the centre of a controversy at Oxford University has been found beheaded in the morning on 10th February, 2016.

Oriel College has confirmed that Police have been called to the scene and have ruled out any involvement from the "Rhodes Must Fall" student group.

After initially issuing a statement that agreed with the protestors, stating the statue was "problematic", and the Oxford Union also voting in favour of the removal of the statue, the university gave in to demands from wealthy donors that the statue remain in place.

Initial reports on the beheading claimed that it had been done by an ISIS / Daesh cell operating in England. In other claims on the internet, British graffiti artist Banksy has been suggested as the perpetrator.

MI5 and MI6 while initally contradicting each other have now confirmed that this is not true. Britain First are being blamed by the Home Office for what it called "irresponsible racist scaremongering".

RANSOM DEMAND

Reports have this morning emerged of a bizarrely named group, referring to themselves as "psychic workers", called All Made-up And Non exidtent and Dead Labourers Association (AMANDLA) which has claimed responsibility for the beheading on various websites and blogs.

Both Oriel College and Oxford University have declined to comment on claims that the group has demanded a £100 million ransom for the return of the head.

RA FEDERICO TRAINE AND GASTON EBUA VERSUS LAND BERLIN

You are kindly invited to take part in the oral hearing and court debate regarding an independent registration of „völkerrechtlischen Menschenrechtsschutzes“ by the „Kammergericht“ Berlin for third party advocacy.

This legally binding procedure under international human rights treaty procedural laws allows an indvidual or any third party who is not a national lawyer to carry out international treaty procedures on their behalf.

Our aim is to force the court to acknowledge that this is equally valid for buisness puposes for third party who are not state lawyers.

We have been sold the idea that the only form of resistance is what happened in the 1960’s. There are any number of ways to resist! Imagine, a Black Love-In. What would that look like? At this point, you probably think I’m unraveling. I’m not. We have to be more creative in our resistance. It has to stop being so reactionary and futile. The protest march has been done to death (literally).

The trip was proposed by comrade Tae Ateh because of quantum superimposition of basic spatial, temporal and animist features, but also because of the biggest variety of the lichens found in the area of Raižiai - (45 taxa), and where most of the gravestones are siliceous rocks (natural collector of information – a hard disc). Very rare species identified were Lecanora semipallida H.Magn., Lecanora sulphurea (Hoffm.) Ach., Xanthoparmelia verruculifera (Nyl.) O. Blanco, Psilolechia lucida (Ach.) M. Choisy, Rhizocarpon geographicum (L.) DC., and Rhizocarpon lecanorinum Anders.

The Raižiai village is known as Tatarian living place since XVI century. There was a Lithuanian Muslim centre since before the World War II and still the community survives as an animist unit – singularity or wahdat.

Event co-ordinated by Alytus Biennial Reversion into Abolition of Culture And Distribution of its Aberrant Bacillus Right Abroad – Committee (ABRACADABRA-C) did an attempt to arrange the trans-national psychic workers‘ meeting with the local community of Raižiai. The communication was available only through the local representative of community Ipolitas, who arranged it in a way of tourist entertainment by presenting the symbolic items, which supposed to mean community itself.

We did a tour through the basic symbolic arrangements serving as screens for the local community to hide away – that was what we realized in the end of our tour when it started to be clear that nobody from the community are willing to appear.

The grand symbol of the Tartar community is the monument for the symbiosis of the Grand Duchess of Lithuania (Columns of Gediminas) and Golden Horde (Tarak-Tamga) – there our tour has started. Comrade Tae Ateh recognized two letters coming into one….

The first time dimension – the dates – those to coincide with the beginning of the Age of Divinity. The oldest date on the memorial is 1397 - this is 2 years after the death of Naimi Fazlallah Hurufi - The Seal of the Saints. The arc of time up until 2007 when Isidore Isou died is what we call the Age of Divinity. It is the period where Judaism is transformed, through the synthesis of Islam and Christianity in Protestantism, into Capitalism which reaches its apex as the organising force of the world.

SIERRA LEONE: EBOLA AGAIN

Details

Written by Elongima Bundu

Published: 29 January 2016

A very serious misconception from the public in Sierra Leone about the first confirmed case in the country of a 22yrs old girl who died few days ago after Ebola was declared Free. She died in the northern Tonkolili district, which borders north and southern province of Sierra Leone. Information coming in from Kambia district indicates that the stepfather to the deceased index case, Sheik Osman Kamara, who recently died from the Ebola virus, has fled to avoid being quarantined along with others who came into contact with the deceased.

The general public is informed of a high risk contact to the index case who is believed to have travelled to the Western Area Urban by boat from Kambia district on Saturday, 16 January 2016.”, The ministry of health said in a press release issued today. Sheik Osman Kamara is the stepfather to the deceased index case and hosted her in Kambia. He is five foot tall, dark in complexion between the ages of 35 to 45 years old. He is an Islamic scholar and was last seen around Pademba Road in Freetown on Saturday. It was gathered that the aged man helped to care for his late step-daughter when she was sick, unknown to him, It was the dreaded Ebola virus disease.Earlier reports had informed that about 103 people who came in contact with the late Mariatu Jalloh, who died last Thursday in Tonkoili district, have been placed in quarantine for medical watch. However, 3 contacts are said to have escaped.

DAMTP WINTER SOLSTICE EDITION issue No. 14 is available

DAMTP continues on producing situographic newspapers - this time in Arabic, Russian, English, Lithuanian, German, Indonesian and Asemic languages. There are further explored global developments of 3 Sided Football, presented the Program on Sensitization and Awareness on Cyber Security for Young Girls in Sierra Leone, media guerilla activism of OKK and as usually spread up asemic multitude in the issue: http://antisystemic.org/SW/DAMTP14.pdf

DAMTP issue No. 13 is available

DAM & Travailleurs Psychique DAWOUrés de internationale situationniste, Numéro 13, Guy Debord‘s death day issue 7PC [2015]. After 46-year psychic break DEWOU-DAMTP cordially accepts the souls of dead situationists who finally got to their destination in Raižiai lichen meadow and continues on since their last issue Internationale Situationniste, Numéro 12, published in 1969. We refer to the détournementof great animist tradition of Siberian shamans who did inhabited the souls of the “communards” shot at the conclusion of the Paris Commune in 1871 and finally got refuge in the Lake Baikal. There is important to point that they did what the materialist left-side-brain-thinkers of Europe never even got to mind – they prefer to follow the concepts. There are explored developments of 3 Sided Football, problems of racism in therealms of serious culture and spread up asemic multitude in the issue: http://antisystemic.org/SW/DAMTP13.pdf

PRELIMINARY PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTING A TRIOLECTIC: Thoughts suggested following experiments in the use of “’pataposition” to render three-sided football in n-dimensional space (in two parts)

Part 1: Alytus, Lughnassadh, 2015 (Report written in anticipation of release for the Winter Solstice, since culture is what is left when all that has been understood is forgotten)

In the summer of 2015 CE, somewhere in a forest in Southern Lithuania, just a few miles from the exact geographical centre-point of Europe, a contingent of psychic workers undertook the construction of a triangular “supercollider” from the ’pataposition of three overlapping orthographic projections of the Kabbalist “Cube of Space”. Here they launched three simultaneous games of three-sided football into each other at high speed, the intense energies released in this “super-superposition” being sufficient to open up higher dimensional space, uncovering the deep triolectics at play within the science of exceptions. In doing so, the assembled situlogists successfully glimpsed the quantum hyperspace of psychogeographic gameplay, completing the first phase in what has been called a “Great Unworking”: Three-sided football’s attempt at the psychogeographical “unbinding” of Europe.

Whilst it had long been decided that our bi -annual festive get-together would be marked by a communal game of three-sided football, initially some debate had taken place as to the exact format this might take. Blissett had, of course, within minutes of arriving, set out our own propositions on the matter to the assembled congress. Blissett and Blissett, as the instantly revocable delegates of the NXTPA, SOF and the Luther Blissett Deptford League, had in fact only arrived in the country the previous evening, having crossed the Konnigsberg bridges at 30,000ft the previous sunset. Still tired from our late night dérive through southern Vinius, a local minibus had spirited us through the sun -soaked pine forests to arrive just in time for coffee.

Blissett presented an informative paper on the 23 varieties of three -sided football, or at least those so far catalogued in the Book of Deptford, whilst Blissett’s report on Triolectical Football in N-Dimensional Space and Kabbalah Quantum Letterism was happily well received by the assembled psychic workers in the hall. In the paper we had suggested that a homeomorphic transformation of the Kabbalah’s Cube of Space - the inspiration for Isou’s Letterist cosmology - had been undertaken by John Dee in the 16th Century, through the use of non-Euclidean, n- dimensional geometry. Presenting the trifurcation of the Cube of Space into the Kabbalists’ Tree of Life (religion), the artists’ colour wheel (art) and the three-sided football field (sport), we demonstrated the hypothesis that through the use of super-superposition (what we opted to call ’pataposition), that it would be possible to experience three-sided football itself in n-dimensional space.

Ateh stated that he too had been considering the possibilities of superposition, whilst Ateh filled in the assembled delegates further upon his important research concerning hidden dimensions of Lettrism at the End of the Age of Divinity. This had, I gathered, been elaborated on at previous congresses, but it was useful for me to have a refresher on such crucial analyses. The afternoon saw us assembling for banner painting, ahead of the planned OPSINA (cOmmitee for the coordination of the psychic workers Plenary to Submit to reproductIve aNd productive workers And dominate destructive workers) psychic attack on the G4S offices at the Swedbank compound in Alytus. We were to carry out the action in solidarity with all those afflicted by its prisons, detention centres and concentrations camps worldwide. Using the collected local clay from the Situchemistry store in order to asemically embellish a number of translucent cloths.

This proletarian medicine was being dished out at morning exercises each daybreak to those willing and able to get up in time, but we noted that it also made an excellent painterly and plastic medium for the patterns and sigils with which we now adorned our garments.

The results, Blissett remarked, were quite satisfactory. Not only that, but I noted that it also reduced our dependence on industrially produced and dubiously sourced pigmentations, whose colonialist patronage is well known. Our newly -embellished drapes were then wrapped about our personages, whilst we transformed ourselves and each other by means of a Situpathic daubing ritual, singing and dancing whilst situlogically transmuting the very forms of our bodies through a transformative morphology of the unique.

ŠUMAVA INTERPRETATION

The origin of Šumava Interpretation idea was shaped from so called tradition of interpretations starting from Niels Bohr’s and Werner Heisenberg‘s Copenhagen Interpretation (1927). It mostly dealt with the notions of complementarity which laid into the basis of ideas of Quantum Mechanics. It holds that the process of measuring the quantum objects produces the results that depend inherently upon the type of a measuring device that is used, and therefore they must necessarily be described in the terms of classical mechanics. To speak more generally – Copenhagen interpretation shaped basic features of experiment as phenomenon and distanced it from classical science which instead establishes authority of the units of measurement.

In 1962 Danish artist and one of the founding members of Situationist International in Silkeborg developed theoretical concerns of what later obtained the name of Silkeborg Interpretation. In fact it was an outcome of a genuine detournement of complementarity and the Copenhagen version of Quantum Mechanics - it appropriates and expands the context of Bohr’s doctrines. Bohr wanted his idea to transcend physics and claimed that complementarity was already affecting other domains of experience, though his arguments for these instances were quite simplistic so Jorn also found triolectics as solution to not to drown into dualisms. Moreover, Jorn claimed that the classical world picture belongs with the classical form of language and will perish with it. When Bohr saw possibly of complementarity in expanding the language of physics, Jorn proposed philosophy or arts to be complementary to science in whole approach. This is evident in his „invention“ of the so called three sided football, which explains all the mechanism of triolectics in a playful way:

Firstly dada is often reduced to Duchamp, especially readymades (what is art/ what is not art) - when readymades were produced by Duchamp between 1913-1915 - before dada. Also Duchamp was hardly part of dada. He was on the periphery of dada.

Related to this, dada was very different in different places. eg in Berlin, Schwitters was (allegedly) excluded by Grosz and Huelsenbeck for not being politically engaged enough. On the other hand in Cologne Seiwert and the Cologne Progressives moved away from dada because it was not politically engaged enough...

Next i think what i did not mention at the event is that dada is connected to us through practice through a line of progression. And this line could feature: surrealism, letterism, situationism and neoism. it could be drawn differently too, eg cybernetic art, fluxus, telematic art, performance art or again: negritude, Harlem renaisance, africobra, agit art ... or again: jazz, beatnik, punk, hip hop ...

Also the question of women in dada and in art. someone spoke of glory - i think Howard. Dada was an anti-war movement. Art, like politics is the continuation of war through other means. war is traditionally a male dominated arena. But to go beyond the war/antiwar, art/antiart logic, we have to consciously do so - and talk of reproductive and destructive workers as well as psychic workers - in other words see the whole situation.

What also i am thinking about is the avant-garde. The avant-garde for me is about artists self-organising. in doing so becoming conscious of themselves as workers and the resources they use and share as workers. Of taking control of the means of production, distribution and consumption, collectively. This means also having to come to a conscious relation to other workers. This for me is not about addressing the workers or educating the workers. it has to do with creating a way of organising that is in harmony with the wider movement of the working class as it organises itself. the problem of bolshevism is the separation of psychic workers into political and cultural workers as separate from economic or productive workers. This ignores the fact that artists and activists both produce things: books, publications, art works. making these available to the working class as samizdat, graffiti etc is is to do with self organising as workers in relation to other workers.

The Pedagogics of Dada

Art practice is appraised within the exigency of its time. The Modern Art movements were pedagogical in spirit. In other worlds, they had as their missions to question through art practice, what their convictions were, about what Art was and what Art wasn't.

“Poetry springs from something deeper; it’s beyond intelligence. It may not even be linked with wisdom. It’s a thing of its own; it has a nature of its own.”

— Jorge Luis Borges.

Artwork is not just something made out of the appropriate materials, and simply called Art. All artwork are representations. Art making is a practice of representation, as the artist works within changing systems and codes, which act upon (affect) how and why artwork is produced, and how it is experienced.

The history of Modern Art is basically a series of lessons. It had long been understood that enlightenment and sophistication were to be acquired through an evolved education and exposure to advanced artworks. So then, what is the pedagogical value of a kind of artwork, that many believe their child can make? Was Modern Art a hoax? Without the esoteric keys, Modern Art left many people bewildered and irritated. The Dada art movement, for sure, requires specific information to open up its meaning and purpose, which also includes knowledge of the historical events that incubated its germination.

Does Dada offer one of Modern Art’s many lessons?

The pedagogics of Modern Art posed as a science of teaching. Modern Art attempted to impart advanced knowledge or sense that resulted from the direct experience of looking, seeing, and comprehending. It attempted to act as an example, by teaching things not previously understood or accepted, including tastes and attitudes that were regarded as nontraditional. Dada initiated a strong rebuke to conventional ways of seeing and understanding, by confronting viewers on how to see and understand cultural production.

Modern Art was produced from the late 1860s through the 1970s. It was a genre of art practice that strayed from traditional techniques and styles that rejected accepted forms to emphasized individual experimentation and sensibility. It was based on what was understood to be the “current” sociopolitical and cultural developments – of the epoch. The “modern” of Modern Art connotes its belonging to the present period in history. The Modern Art movements consisted of the latest, most advanced approaches to thinking and art making, using the most advanced materials, equipment, and techniques available – at that time. Their resources were those that had been “newly” developed. Modern Art understood itself as the latest and most recent stage in the development of a (cultural) language.

Pre-modern art practices were revered cultural institutions that had evolved over many generations. They prized artwork that exemplified a human endeavor for highly skilled technique, in the production of visual representations. Pre-modern art understood the notion of “culture”, i.e. the visual arts, music, literature, and related intellectual activities, as respecting the beliefs, customs, practices, and social behavior of a civilization of shared beliefs, that identified with and signed Europe as a particular culture.